[HN Gopher] Bloom/Lambda School requires applying to 460 jobs be...
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       Bloom/Lambda School requires applying to 460 jobs before giving
       tuition refund
        
       Author : smitop
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2021-11-16 20:09 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | niknoble wrote:
       | If you never sign up for their school and just do the things
       | required for the refund, you'll easily land a job.
        
       | theGeatZhopa wrote:
       | What??? 460 job applications? That's crazy man. I applied exactly
       | one time and I shiver of thinking to applicate at some time
       | again.. Is that proper practice with schools that take tuition
       | fees?
        
       | 908B64B197 wrote:
       | I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning
       | that some of the TA's at Lambda are hired to help with teaching
       | as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess
       | that counts toward their "placement" stats!
       | 
       | Not only that, but Lambda seems so desperate that they will offer
       | a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period.
       | [1]
       | 
       | I don't think I've seen a single hire out of a bootcamp work out
       | in the end. Except a few cases where the person actually came
       | from a STEM degree from a good school (and more crucially,
       | already had some exposure to programming during the degree) but
       | it's unclear to me that they actually needed the bootcamp and not
       | just a good primer on modern software development and something
       | like the Missing Semester [2] or a few classes at their school
       | covering software engineering.
       | 
       | [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-
       | job-p...
       | 
       | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610
       | 
       | [2] https://missing.csail.mit.edu/
        
         | CheezeIt wrote:
         | Huh. You seem to like pasting the same comment a lot.
         | 
         | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
        
       | Tenoke wrote:
       | You can easily apply to 20 jobs a day at least in bigger cities
       | (though the requirement here is just 10 a week for a longer
       | period). It sounds like a lot on paper but it's really not that
       | unreasonable and I fequently advise people to apply more if they
       | don't get something after a mere 10 applications.
        
         | chris11 wrote:
         | I don't think you can sustainably send out 20 high quality
         | applications a day. I think you should send emails or cover
         | letters about why you are interested, and would be a good fit.
         | 
         | Plus, finding opening where you are a good fit takes work,
         | especially if you are a new grad.
        
           | hellotomyrars wrote:
           | Honestly sending out 20 applications a day sounds like a
           | nightmare. There are sites where it's easy and simple but
           | many companies still insist on using their own internal
           | hiring software which is often a complete and total usability
           | nightmare and if you actually want to fill things out you're
           | going to be spending a long time repeating information from
           | your resume in the format they desire. It sucks.
           | 
           | I truly can not stand how shitty and annoying it is to fill
           | these out. There are some circumstances where I understand it
           | regarding security clearance/background checks but even then
           | there are absurd cases of duplication. Admittedly I'm in a
           | somewhat unique position of having lived in something like 10
           | places in the last 7 years so it's especially bad but
           | multiple government agencies I've applied with have required
           | information that I've already sent at a different phase of
           | hiring repeated again, and the USPS Postal Police background
           | check site which is very similar to SF-86 is possibly the
           | most user-hostile site to fill forms for.
           | 
           | I could easily apply to 20 jobs, assuming they existed, via
           | indeed in half an hour. But once a company requires you to go
           | to their own site it can take half an hour to an hour to
           | complete the process.
        
           | pinewurst wrote:
           | The fine print doesn't mandate that the applications be of
           | high quality. You do the best you can with the one's that are
           | "real" and cheese the rest, if you really think you're going
           | to get your refund by doing so.
        
       | minimaxir wrote:
       | _And_ reach out to 460 people for professional networking. _And_
       | 230 public commits on GitHub. _And_ various unspecified other
       | criteria (which are present in the PDF linked by sandofsky,
       | including always being available for interviews and job hunt
       | audits).
        
         | holonomically wrote:
         | I guess they really want people to apply to a lot of jobs but
         | 460 still seems like a very large number. If someone applied to
         | 5 jobs a day (a very high estimate) then it would take them at
         | least 3 months before they would be able to claim a refund.
         | This is assuming they weren't doing anything else other than
         | applying and interviewing.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | MivLives wrote:
           | I graduated from Lambda. I did... pretty much exactly that. I
           | hit 250 applications total, did that five days a week, spent
           | a sixth writing a medium article on the sixth, and the
           | seventh I spent away from the computer. I targeted around 3
           | jobs a day, and would do that first thing, any
           | interviews/coding challenges I managed to get were right
           | after.
           | 
           | It was incredibly demoralizing, especially as I watched other
           | people I knew get hired, or worse not get hired.
        
         | smelendez wrote:
         | GitHub is certainly gameable, but reaching out to 10 people a
         | week for networking is ridiculous. Also, the requirement that
         | you follow up with each job app by email/phone/text, which is
         | almost never what employers want.
        
       | jamesmishra wrote:
       | I think it is a little harsh to set the tuition refund bar to be
       | so high. On the other hand, if I had a friend who was rejected
       | from 459 jobs, I would still advise them to keep applying. What
       | else could I say?
       | 
       | The more worrying part of the Tuition Refund Guarantee is where
       | the student forfeits their right to a refund if they receive a
       | job offer that they turn down. Many coding bootcamp students
       | apply to companies with a serious red flag--such as startups that
       | are about to run out of money. The student may only be able to
       | see the red flag _after_ the company has given an offer, but if a
       | student rejects a  "red flag offer", they must assume they will
       | never need a tuition refund.
        
       | runnerup wrote:
       | Related, I believe General Assembly's debt can only be discharged
       | after 8 years of not finding any job that pays higher than
       | $60,000(?). Notably, a $62,000/year job as the manager of a
       | supermarket will count, and the number does not appear to be
       | adjusted for inflation. So if inflation were (an admittedly eye-
       | watering) 6% per year for the next 8 years, then any job
       | equivalent to today's $37,700/year would prevent you from
       | "escaping" the bootcamp debt.
       | 
       | Additionally, GA does not have control over the debt forgiveness,
       | rather their underwriter (some financial institution) gets to
       | make the final call...8 years from now.
        
       | sandofsky wrote:
       | For anyone else who wants to dig into the full terms and
       | conditions: https://bloomtech-
       | catalog.s3.amazonaws.com/Tuition%20Refund%...
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-16 23:02 UTC)